We happily went a few blocks away from campus to the local mall. Not gonna lie, this mall pretty strongly catered to tourists. You can't see from here, but the entire bottom floor is a decked out KFC, which apparently is a really big deal here.
The placemats only begin to describe the cuteness that was this restaurant. Diversity! Pleasure! Experience! I'm almost sure we had all three...
So after a several hours of panicked study and fewer hours of sleep I took my first test.
I was really worried because at Yale most of our tests are done in Pinyin and here Pinyin basically doesn't exist. So studying about 200 new characters for today's test was terrifying. But the test was actually a lot easier than I had anticipated and immediately after it was done we all went to our second 中文桌子(Chinese Table). This time we ate at a neighboring university. The food somehow was even better than last time's. I experimented with a whole bunch of yummy dishes I don't remember the names of. And we were all pretty amused by the chicken that came with head and all.（See below)
The waiter was unbelievably patient with (and mostly amused by) our broken Chinese. He even, after noticing Yoonji's birthday present sitting on the table, brought her a cake (see below) and put an instrumental version of "Happy Birthday" on the radio.
Thursday was almost in its entirety spent studying for our first weekly test. Below is a picture I took on the way home from class. This is the scenic route between the academic building and conference center (where we're staying). This picture doesn't do it justice. It not only doesn't capture all the great landscaping but it was also taken after it rained. Beijing, btw, rains for like 5 minutes everyday. And sometimes there is thunder, lightning, and insanely loud wind, but no rain. I don't understand it. But I'm not complaining since I'm not usually outside when it does actually rain.
So after a several hours of panicked study and fewer hours of sleep I took my first test.I was really worried because at Yale most of our tests are done in Pinyin and here Pinyin basically doesn't exist. So studying about 200 new characters for today's test was terrifying. But the test was actually a lot easier than I had anticipated and immediately after it was done we all went to our second 中文桌子(Chinese Table). This time we ate at a neighboring university. The food somehow was even better than last time's. I experimented with a whole bunch of yummy dishes I don't remember the names of. And we were all pretty amused by the chicken that came with head and all.（See below)
I MISS YOU. (and chinese food).
ReplyDelete<3
I know Ryan!
ReplyDelete--Louis